Dougie's Whisky Story

It has been asked before but I will ask again, how many new whisky websites are going to pop up with the EXACT SAME FORMAT? Another forum? Another log of tasting notes and distillery info? Another zzzzz...
Maybe I am bitter cuz I am often omitted from these new sites' blogrolls?
Maybe I just think we can be smarter than that.

Dougie proves me right with his new blog, Whisky Story.

While I obviously approve of the font choice, the wider concept is brilliant: a contemporary whisky journey inspired by the travels and reports of Alfred Barnard.

Barnard worked for Harpers Weekly Gazette in the 1880s and set upon a journey to every distillery in Scotland (129 at the time), Ireland (29) and England (4). His reports were serialized in Harpers and, in 1887, published in book form as The Whisky Distilleries of the United Kingdom.

One of the most important books in British whisky history, it fell out of print but was brought back about 20 years ago in a rather beautiful 500+ page hardcover edition. It has been reprinted several times since.

Dougie, we follow you and hope that in 80 years when there are only 58 Scottish distilleries left between two large foreign owners, that your record of distilleries in 2010-2011 is deemed one of the most important blogs in whisky history. Safe travels, and perhaps I will see you on the trail?

Follow the Whisky Story HERE.

Going Global

Hi. Long time no see.

While I have not been producing much on Dr. Whisky, I do promise I have been keeping busy spreading the gospel of whisky both at work and at play.

We held a tasting for Balvenie that had been a whisky geek dream of mine for some time now: to taste the full historical range of The Balvenie. While we didn't have everything, we had a pretty damn near complete archive, all open, all available for sampling for Warehouse 24 members. It really was amazing. (For facebookers, photos are HERE, video HERE)

But the geek dream continues. I was invited to become The Balvenie Global Ambassador and I couldn't be more honoured, excited, anxious, etc. Back in May 2008 I announced on this blog that Dr. Whisky had accepted a job in the whisky industry/gone corporate/sold his soul/got your dream job in the USA and today that dream continues on a Global level. I look forward to meeting more whisky lovers from all over the whiskyverse and am so grateful to everyone that has helped me along my malt mission. THANK YOU and see you soon.

But I am not writing this post to write about myself. I wanted to write a post about the outstanding work being done on other blogs that I read, namely Yossi's Balvenie week (obviously), Oliver's controversial, informative and provocative posts on Dramming.com, Jason (et al) and their innovative and interesting Whisky Roundtable (no, I do not have a seat), and the recent amazing guest posts on What Does John Know. The world wide web is soaked in whisky, it seems, and we are all the better for it.

More on these pages soon, I promise. I have a ton of samples to get through before moving back across the pond! It's a hard life.